Community demands justice in McDade shooting

PASADENA - Community activists demanded justice Tuesday for slain black teenager Kendrec McDade during a rally on the steps of Pasadena City Hall.

Local and national NAACP leaders joined Pasadena clergy members and more than 100 demonstrators on the steps of Pasadena City Hall on Tuesday to rally in support of justice for the unarmed black teen gunned down by Pasadena police officers Mathew Griffin and Jeffrey Newlen on a poorly lit street on March 24.

The cops reportedly thought McDade was armed.

Pasadena Community Coalition member Martin Gordon asked the crowd to flood City Hall and the Pasadena Police Department with letters, phone calls and emails to "let them know we want justice for Kendrec McDade."

Gordon said the McDade shooting mirrors other officer involved slayings of black men in the U.S. such as the Kenneth Chamberlain shooting in New York and said the shooting illustrates to him the lack of value placed on the lives of minorities.

"If you devalue you black people and people of color, then it's open season," he said.

Some likened the shooting to a modern day lynching and called the officer involved slaying a murder.

"This murder of this young man is part of a murders going on across the country," said Qwazi Nkrumah, from Occupy Los Angeles and Occupy the Hood.

The March 24 shooting has shaken the community of Pasadena and reopened old wounds from previous slayings of black men at the hands of Pasadena cops.

Demonstrators held signs with the names of nine men killed by the Pasadena police offices during the last 19 years. For long time resident and member of the Pasadena-branch NAACP Gary Moody said the McDade shooting rings eerily familiar.

"We are still fighting the same institutional racism," Moody said. "We are fighting some of the same battles we fought in 1965."

The McDade family filed a lawsuit on April 3. The family's attorney continued her calls for a U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, despite the four current investigations, two by county agencies, one by the Pasadena Police Department and the probe started by the FBI last week.

"Not to disrespect any other agency, but I am asking for the Civil Rights Division to investigate," Harper said.

"There is a cover up. We need to get to the bottom of this," she added.